Chapter 2: Statistical snapshot

Abbreviations

A list of the abbreviations used in this report is available in the Glossary

Demography of the SES leadership group

The SES constitutes the senior management and leadership group of the APS, and comprised 1.7% of total ongoing APS employment at June 2006, a very slight increase on the previous year.¹⁵ The size of the SES has fluctuated over the past decade, from a low of 1574 in 1998 to 2253 this year—the largest since the SES was established in 1984.

Band 1 SES employees make up the largest proportion at 75.6% of all ongoing SES employees. Band 2 comprise 19.5% and Band 3 comprise 4.9%. Proportionally, most of the growth this year was in the Band 3 cohort which grew by 15 or 15.6% during 2005–06. In actual numbers, the strongest growth was in Band 1 which grew by 174 or 11.4%. The agencies with the largest net increases in Band 1 employees were DIMA (up by 16 or 28.6%), DEST (15 or 30.6%) and Finance (12 or 27.3%).

The proportion of women in the SES continued to rise this year to 34.8%, up from 33.2% at June 2005; at June 1997 women’s representation was 19.7%. As is the case for the overall APS, women are concentrated at lower levels in the SES: 81.1% of SES women are at Band 1 compared with 72.6% of men, 15.4% are at Band 2 compared with 21.7% of men, and 3.4% are at Band 3 compared with 5.7% of men. During 2005–06, the strongest proportional growth for women in the SES was at Band 3, where their representation increased from 19 to 27 people—a rise of 42.1%.

Figure 2.19 shows the changing age profile of the SES over the past 10 years. The shift indicates an ageing of the SES workforce, consistent with the ageing of the APS overall. This year, the median age of SES remained steady at 48 years—49 years for men and 47 years for women. Since 1997 the proportion of ongoing SES employees aged under 45 has fallen slightly from 30.5% to 28.9%. The major change over time has been the increase in the proportion of SES in the 55–59 age group. This year is the first in which the proportion aged 50–54 is lower than it was 10 years ago. Overall, the trend towards an ageing of the SES appears to have settled somewhat.

Figure 2.19: Age profile for ongoing SES employees, 1997 and 2006

Source: APSED

The age profile for female SES is somewhat younger than for males: 35.2% of female SES are aged under 45 compared with 25.6% of male SES.

Table 2.4 indicates that over one third of SES Band 1s (37.8%) are aged 50 years or over. For Band 2s, over half are in that age group (55.4%). Band 3s have an even older age profile with almost three-quarters (73.9%) being over 50. Currently, 75 SES employees (comprising 3.3% of the SES cohort) are aged 60 and over. This compares with 74 or 3.6% at June 2005

Table 2.4: Ongoing SES employees by age group, sex and level, June 2006
	SES 1			SES 2			SES 3			Total
	M	F	Total	M	F	Total	M	F	Total	No.	%	% who are female
25-29	1	1	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0.1	50.0
30-34	30	21	51	1	1	2	0	0	0	53	2.4	41.5
35-39	106	68	174	10	1	11	0	1	1	186	8.3	37.6
40-44	182	152	334	38	29	67	8	2	10	411	18.2	44.5
45-49	311	187	498	76	40	116	11	7	18	632	28.1	37.0
50-54	267	139	406	89	32	121	32	12	44	571	25.3	32.0
55-59	142	60	202	79	16	95	23	3	26	323	14.3	24.5
60 & over	27	9	36	25	2	27	10	2	12	75	3.3	17.3
Total	1066	637	1703	318	121	439	84	27	111	2253	100.0	34.8
Source: APSED

Further analysis of the composition of the SES leadership group can be found in Chapter 7. The data in that chapter excludes inoperative SES as, for that particular analysis, the focus is on capability requirements of the leadership cadre currently active within agencies, and this chapter focuses on trends in the overall composition of the APS.

The increase was from 1.64% to 1.67%—a rise of only 0.03 percentage points, but when rounded to one decimal place the increase is 0.1 decimal points.